


The Prince's Confidants

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Black Ships - Jo Graham
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pre-OT3, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28201074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Neas confides most of his troubles in Sybil (Pythia, Gull as some call her). He does not go to her about Basetamon. For that, he goes to Xandros.
Relationships: Gull/Neas/Xandros (Black Ships), Neas/Basetamon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Prince's Confidants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts).



Neas confided in Sybil for most of his worries. His worries that concerned the People, his worries over becoming a king someday, his worries over the future, his grief over the past. All these things he passed over to her—sometimes she would come to advise him before he knew he needed to be advised, while, if he surprised her with a concern, she would always be ready to listen. This was good, for most of his worries.

He could not confide in her about Basetamon. It would have felt wrong. Part of him said, “she is young, and newly in love with Xandros, and does not need to hear all the complicated ways that passion can turn.” Another part of him said, “she was a slave in Pylos, and knows far too much about darker passions than Basetamon’s. I cannot trouble her with this.” And then there was a part of him—he thought sometimes a nobler part, sometimes a guiltier part—that didn’t wish to speak of his relationship with Basetamon to another woman, a woman he loved. It would have felt like a betrayal, and Basetamon was so desperate for fidelity.

He confided in Xandros instead. There were many weights he did not like to put on Xandros, and those were weights he put on Sybil. But this was personal, and Xandros was his long-time friend.

Xandros listened, generally. Sometimes he would assure Neas that if he wanted to leave or needed Xandros to do something, Xandros was ready to help. But they both knew basically that for the time being, there was little that could be done.

Usually Basetamon’s mood shifts and cruel games hurt nothing but Neas’s pride. On one evening, though—a rare evening that he went home early, the game having ended poorly with Basetamon withdrawn and needing space—he returned to camp with a couple long cuts on his legs. Basetamon had told her maid to whip him about the legs with a thin rod, a game harsher than was typical with her. Eventually she’d been full of regrets, but not as soon as Neas would have liked.

Xandros’s eyes were grave as he looked at the cuts, despite their hardly being severe or deep. He asked, “Did you have the wounds treated before you left?”

It would have been more accurate to ask if Basetamon had, and she hadn’t. But Neas had cleaned them before heading out, and she’d given him some ointment to use, which he now handed to Xandros. He could have used it himself, but somehow he wanted this. Wanted Xandros to put him back together again. Not that he was broken, but he did feel somewhat shaken.

Xandros cleaned the cuts again and then spread the ointment gingerly. It was of a kind the Egyptians had provided them to use in the past, after battles. Xandros mused, “Gull could probably tell us what’s in this stuff and how it works by now. That priest has moved on to teaching her all sorts of things now that she speaks Khemet and reads a little of it. Every day she comes back telling me about some new scroll she’s discovered.”

“Sybil knows a great deal,” Neas said, and as the pain of the cuts faded (the ointment promoted healing but also soothed pain), he was able to feel amusement rather than exhaustion, amusement and a little fondness. Xandros called Sybil “Gull” more and more lately. At first Neas hadn’t known who he was speaking about when he said it, and when he’d asked, half-wondering if it was a nickname Xandros had given some Egyptian woman he’d taken up with, Xandros had blushed badly.

“Pythia,” he’d amended, “I meant Pythia. She told me her name used to be Gull, before she was taken in by her mentor.”

Neas had hummed and nodded, said he hadn’t known that, and hadn’t teased—well, he’d given Xandros a certain look, but he hadn’t pushed. This name-changing more than anything confirmed the gossip he’d heard about Xandros and Sybil getting together, and made him feel more at ease about the news. Xandros and Sybil had been friends for some time, but he’d thought sometimes that Sybil was more interested in Xandros than him in her, and worried Xandros would never recover from the loss of his wife and then Ashterah, one so soon after the other. Sharing physical pleasure was one thing, but to begin calling an oracle by the name she’d used as a child (and she must have been a very young child) spoke to a different kind of relationship.

As for Neas, he did not think he could call Sybil “Gull” or think of her as such. He’d kissed her once, and doubted he would again. She was a woman, a young and beautiful woman, but her office to his office was more important than what her person was to his person. When he thought of the moments when they had been the most intimate—how he’d cried in her arms on Thera, how she’d reassured him about the future time and again—he thought that at those times he had felt very much a prince with his destiny high in his throat, and she had been very much the oracle.

It was not a distant relationship. Only different from what Xandros could share with either one of them.

Xandros finished with the ointment and capped the bottle. There was still a good deal left, which Neas might use tomorrow, perhaps, or save for a more pressing need in the future. “The cuts aren’t bad.”

“No. I suppose I’m more rattled than anything else. And Basetamon said she was sorry. That was why she wanted to be alone. Still…” It was no way to treat a prince or a lover.

Xandros’s hand rested on Neas’s ankle, below the cuts. He had large, warm hands, Xandros. “The way she treats you is not right.”

“She’s disturbed. She was sorry.” Neas rubbed his head. “Anyway, it is what it is.”

Xandros squeezed his ankle. “You’ll be sleeping here tonight?”

“Yes.”

“You should join me and Gull,” Xandros said.

“I think I’d get in the way,” Neas said, a little amused again.

“Hardly. But do as you please.”

Neas had his own bed. He hardly needed to join a new couple and disturb their lovemaking. But the night was a lonely one, he thought, though he would have had a hard time saying why, and so in the end he followed Xandros back to where he and Sybil slept. Sybil was already lying down, but when she saw them approaching, she got to her feet. “My prince.”

“Rest. I’m not here for counsel,” Neas said. “Xandros said you two would give me company for the night. Though if you’d rather I leave…”

Sybil glanced at Xandros, then shook her head. Still, she lay back down only slowly. Xandros gestured for Neas to lie down too, then, and so Neas ended up lying between them.

They had different manners of sleeping. Sybil lay on her back. She was close to Neas, arm brushing his arm, but not entangled. Stiff, at first, then slowly relaxing. Warm but not daring. Xandros, on the other hand, lay on his side with an arm extended over Neas’s stomach, holding him close. His legs pressed against Neas’s legs, too, though not against any of the cuts, and his and Neas’s feet tangled together lower down. His hips were close against the side of Neas’s hips.

Neas was lightly aroused. Such proximity to either one of them would have been enjoyable, perhaps, but both at once was a lot to take in, not to mention that this was practically a marital bed; the closest to one that Sybil would ever get, considering her vocation. He did not really belong here, but Xandros acted as if he did, and Sybil did not object, even though at this moment she was not very much Pythia, far closer to being the Gull that Xandros loved—that Xandros would have been loving in a more active fashion were Neas absent.

It felt good to be with them, but he couldn’t help but feel a little tense, too, a little guilty.

But Xandros shifted even closer, nuzzled his neck and murmured in his ear, “Neas, sleep.”

And Sybil said, “Prince Aeneas, be at peace.”

Two such different people addressing two such different sides of him. He felt deeply known. Between them and their different loves, he fell asleep.

(In the morning, Xandros would wake him and his Sybil both with a kiss.)


End file.
